1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to liquid dispensing apparatus and particularly to such apparatus that can be used for dispensing a carbonated soft drink from a large soft drink bottle.
2. Description of the prior art
A carbonated drink is normally dispensed from its bottle by a person turning the bottle over by hand and pouring a drink therefrom into a glass or a cup or the like. Although satisfactory for small bottles when the entire contents are dispensed on one or two pourings, such dispensing procedure is not always satisfactory from large bottles, such as from a two or three liter bottle. Not only are such bottles, especially full, awkward and heavy, but it is common that the bottle is not drained when dispensing is completed. A bottle not drained, if allowed to sit uncapped for any length of time, will not keep the liquid within it carbonated. Moreover, when many drinks are being dispensed, it is much more efficient to have dispensing apparatus for the bottles, especially if the dispensing apparatus minimizes turbulence and, therefore, minimizes the formation of foam in the liquid as it is being dispensed.
Bottle dispensers have been developed in the prior art; however, heretofore none has been as efficient and simple to manufacture, to clean after use, or to controllably operate as applicant's liquid dispensing apparatus that is described and claimed herein. Representative of the latest in such designs prior to that disclosed herein is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,653, issued March 25, 1980 to Joe L. Brown. The Brown dispenser includes, in one embodiment, an adapter that attaches to the top of a bottle. A so-called sealing ring press fits around the top of a long tube that goes into the bottle and is "sealed" in place by the tightening of the adapter onto the bottle. A valve mechanism is then pressed over the adapter ring. A plunger operated from the top opens a valve chamber in the valve mechanism in on/off fashion to communicate the tube in the bottle through the valve chamber with an external dispensing spout. The flow is caused by the carbonation within the liquid and the flow rate is determined by the ratio of the tube internal diameter to the internal diameter of the spout.
It has been discovered that the parts of the dispenser and adapter do not reliably seal, especially after initial use; the flow is not easy to control and either bursts out or shuts off; the liquid flow is quite turbulent so that bubbles in the liquid produce an excessive "head" on the dispensed liquid; and the many parts are cumbersome to clean and reinstall after use before the apparatus can be used again.
Therefore, it is a feature of the present invention to provide an improved liquid dispensing apparatus for use with a bottle containing carbonated soft drink or the like that has a controllable valving mechanism, the flow rate being determined by how hard a plunger button depressed.
It is another feature of the present invention to provide an improved liquid dispensing apparatus of such type that comprises very few parts and is, therefore, easy to clean prior to reuse.
It is still another feature of the present invention to produce an improved liquid dispensing apparatus that reliably seals against leakage both during usage and between uses to prevent carbonation from escaping.